“The day was gone, the twilight was gone, and the snow was invisible as I came down to the side of the lake. Only the moon, white and shining, was in the sky, like a woman glorying in her own loveliness as she loiters superbly to the gaze of all the world, looking sometimes through the fringe of dark olive leaves, sometimes looking at her own superb, quivering body, wholly naked in the water of the lake.”

“In the inner dark she saw a handsome bay horse with his clean earspricked like daggers from his naked head as he swung handsomely roundto stare at the open doorway. He had big, black, brilliant eyes, with asharp questioning glint, and that air of tense, alert quietness which betraysan animal that can be dangerous... He was of such a lovely red-goldcolour, and a dark, invisible fire seemed to come out of him .. .She looked at the glowing bay horse, that stood there with his ears back,his face averted, but attending as if he were some lightning conductor. Hewas a stallion . ..Dimly, in her weary young-woman's soul, an ancient understandingseemed to flood in . . . For some reason the sight of him, his power, his alive,alert intensity, his unyieldingness, made her want to cry. She never didcry ... But now, as if that mysterious fire of the horse's body had split somerock in her, she went home and hid herself in her room, and just cried. Thewild, brilliant, alert head of St Mawr seemed to look at her out of anotherworld. It was as if she had had a vision, as if the walls of her own world hadsuddenly melted away, leaving her in a great darkness, in the midst of whichthe large, brilliant eyes of that horse looked at her with demonish question,while his naked ears stood up like daggers from the naked lines of hisinhuman head, and his great body glowed red with power.What was it? Almost like a god looking at her terribly out of theeverlasting dark, she had felt the eyes of that horse; great, glowing,fearsome eyes, arched with a question, and containing a white blade oflight like a threat. What was his non-human question, and his uncannythreat? She didn't know. He was some splendid demon, and she mustworship him. (St Mawr)”

“His body was urgent against her, and she didn't have the heart anymore to fight...She saw his eyes, tense and brilliant, fierce, not loving. But her will had left her. A strange weight was on her limbs. She was giving way. She was giving up...she had to lie down there under the boughs of the tree, like an animal, while he waited, standing there in his shirt and breeches, watching her with haunted eyes...He too had bared the front part of his body and she felt his naked flesh against her as he came into her. For a moment he was still inside her, turgid there and quivering. Then as he began to move, in the sudden helpless orgasm, there awoke in her new strange thrills rippling inside her. Rippling, rippling, rippling, like a flapping overlapping of soft flames, soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance, exquisite and melting her all molten inside. It was like bells rippling up and up to a culmination. She lay unconscious of the wild little cries she uttered at the last. But it was over too soon, too soon, and she could no longer force her own conclusion with her own activity. This was different, different. She could do nothing. She could no longer harden and grip for her own satisfaction upon him. She could only wait, wait and moan in spirit and she felt him withdrawing, withdrawing and contracting, coming to the terrible moment when he would slip out of her and be gone. Whilst all her womb was open and soft, and softly clamouring, like a sea anenome under the tide, clamouring for him to come in again and make fulfillment for her. She clung to him unconscious in passion, and he never quite slipped from her, and she felt the soft bud of him within her stirring, and strange rhythms flushing up into her with a strange rhythmic growing motion, swelling and swelling til it filled all her cleaving consciousness, and then began again the unspeakable motion that was not really motion, but pure deepening whirlpools of sensation swirling deeper and deeper through all her tissue and consciousness, til she was one perfect concentric fluid of feeling, and she lay there crying in unconscious inarticulate cries.”

“He felt that she wanted the soul out of his body and not him. All his strength and energy she drew into herself through some channel which united them. She did not want to meet him so that there were two of them man and woman together. She wanted to draw all of him into her. It urged him to an intensity like madness which fascinated him as drug-taking might. He was discussing Michael Angelo. It felt to her as if she were fingering the very quivering tissue the very protoplasm of life as she heard him. It gave her deepest satisfaction. And in the end it frightened her. There he lay in the white intensity of his search and his voice gradually filled her with fear so level it was almost inhuman as if in a trance.”

“She looked at her roses. They were white, some incurved and holy, others expanded in an ecstacy. The tree was dark as a shadow. She lifted her hand impulsively to the flowers; she went forward and touched them in worship.”

“A dozen or more boats on the lake swung their rosy and moon–like lanterns low on the water, that reflected as from a fire. In the distance, the steamer twanged and thrummed and washed with her faintly–splashing paddles, trailing her strings of coloured lights, and occasionally lighting up the whole scene luridly with an effusion of fireworks, Roman candles and sheafs of stars and other simple effects, illuminating the surface of the water, and showing the boats creeping round, low down. Then the lovely darkness fell again, the lanterns and the little threaded lights glimmered softly, there was a muffled knocking of oars and a waving of music.Gudrun paddled almost imperceptibly. Gerald could see, not far ahead, the rich blue and the rose globes of Ursula’s lanterns swaying softly cheek to cheek as Birkin rowed, and iridescent, evanescent gleams chasing in the wake. He was aware, too, of his own delicately coloured lights casting their softness behind him.”

“The tall white lillies were reeling in the moonlight, and the air was charged with perfume, as with a presence. Mrs. Morel gasped slightly in fear. She touched the big, pallid flowers on their petals, then shivered. They seemed to be stretching in the moonlight. She put her hand into one white bin: the gold scarcely showed on her fingers by moonlight. She bent down to look at the binful of yellow pollen; but it only appeared dusky. The she drank a deep draught of the scent. It almost made her dizzy.”